Why not the 21st?

THE PROTOTYPE HAS BEEN LEVITATING FOR SIX YEARS, FOUR MONTHS, TWELVE DAYS

TOTAL POWER USAGE: ZERO

SEE www.fastransitinc.com

We here at Fastransit and other maglev companies continue to be frustrated by the billions being pledged by the federal government and a number of states to construct a high-speed passenger rail system. Huge sums will be spent to develop a series of largely unconnected routes, in many cases requiring the acquisition and preparation of new rights of way where land values are quite high.

And for what? Even ignoring the likelihood of project delays/changes resulting from politics, environmental concerns, and our litigious nature, parts of the country where automobiles and airplanes carry nearly every inter-city passenger and the one part of the US where a fair number of people already ride the rails (the Northeast) will find that their regional rail systems have advanced from the McKinley era to the Mitterand era. This is certainly an improvement but, not long after the assassination of the former, the American love affair with the automobile entered the awkward dating phase; by the time the latter was in high school the relationship had moved into the serious/committed mode in which it remains today.

While pundits who cite the US's low population density and its emphasis on rugged individualism as the key reasons that we love our cars are not necessarily off the mark, they have ignored the fact that automobiles in most cases offer the best value proposition to the individual. Wonder why China is the largest auto market in the world? Its population is packed into large cities and rugged individualists are rounded up and shot. Rapid growth in prosperity is the driver there and elsewhere. In the 1980s and 1990s, Western Europe, despite the opening of numerous high-speed rail lines, saw vehicles per capita increase dramatically while the US, having prospered after World War II while Europe was catching up after the devastation of the war, actually experienced a ten percent decline in cars per head from 1980 to 2001 despite passenger rail alternatives going generally from bad to worse.

Fastransit gets this. Along with our freight and intracity solutions, our intercity system will bring US rail transportation into the 21st Century (which started TEN years ago), by offering passengers the ability to drive their cars onto sleds which are then whisked to their destinations while the drivers relax -- but are able to use their cars upon arrival.

This is 21st Century Transportation. We know that you love your car and aren't going to desert it just for a fast train ride. And we know that fast doesn't mean high-speed rail.

Fastransit's Harbor Freight Animation

FASTRANSIT’s freight capacity will also revolutionize freight forwarding, by allowing specific containers to be offloaded onto individual flatcars that could then be sent directly to their destination on the freight interstate – again, no need to wait for a long trainload of containers to be loaded up one by one. This ability will vastly increase the throughput capacity at ports such as Los Angeles/Long Beach, where the Alameda rail corridor from the ports to inland freight terminals is quickly nearing capacity.

Fastransit's GRT Vehicle Animation

FASTRANSIT’s unique capability to provide electronic instantaneous switching will allow urban mass transit systems to offer better service on high-volume routes; it will also allow utilization of smaller vehicles in either Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) or Group Rapid Transit (GRT) (seen here) configurations, with dramatically shorter headways than current transit systems require. The result will be more frequent and convenient service, lower overall travel times, higher passenger volumes per hour, and lower operating costs.

Fastransit's Tabletop Demo 2

The scale model maglev train was taken from concept to working prototype in just under six months. The prototype system uses the patented Stabilized Permanent Magnet (SPM) suspension technology which is easily scaled to accommodate larger and heavier vehicles for the transport of passengers or freight.

Fastransit's Tabletop Demo in Action

The scale model maglev train was taken from concept to working prototype in just under six months. The prototype system uses the patented Stabilized Permanent Magnet (SPM) suspension technology which is easily scaled to accommodate larger and heavier vehicles for the transport of passengers or freight.

Fastransit's PRT Vehicle

FASTRANSIT’s technology will revolutionize our surface transportation system using both small and large computer-controlled maglev vehicles. Maglev PRT (Personal Rapid Transit), GRT (Group Rapid Transit) and freight systems will provide lower operating costs and greatly reduced capital investment requirements compared with conventional maglev designs or other transportation modes. Variations are suitable for industrial, intra-city, inter-city and even trans-continental passenger and freight transportation. In developing countries this could multiply the effectiveness of the huge transportation expenditures planned and needed in the coming decades.

Fastransit's Rail Retrofit

A variety of guideway designs can be employed, either below ground, at ground level, or elevated. A basic, ground-level guideway will have a cost and complexity level similar to a standard railroad track, but with lower load-bearing requirements due to the large footprint of SPM maglev skis.

Fastransit's Highway Retrofit

FASTRANSIT can exploit the tens of thousands of freeway miles by placing tracks on median strips or shoulders, frequently eliminating the need to purchase new rights of way. Vehicles are also compatible with narrow, twisting urban rights of way, allowing the use of existing or abandoned railroad rights of way or even city streets.

Fastransit's GRT Vehicle up Close

Currently, urban mass transit consists of trains of multiple cars carrying up to several hundred passengers per train and running with headways of several minutes, at best. The requirement for each train to stop at each station along the way results in longer origin-to-destination transit times. Off-peak headways are considerably longer because of the equipment and labor inefficiencies at lower ridership densities.

Fastransit's Freight Interstate

Using existing rail rights of way and space adjacent to, or within the median of, the existing interstate highway system, we can create a new, zero-emission, high-speed, “freight interstate” for long-distance freight transport without the need for massive land acquisition through eminent domain, using existing trailer-load freight distribution networks.

A Fastransit Interchange

The freight interstate will also serve as the springboard for a high-speed inter-city passenger transit network. Such a new network would likely be a hybrid of existing inter-city rail facilities and the freight interstate lines, as the interstate routes run more directly between most cities than rail lines that were laid down over 100 years ago to follow the terrain.

A Fastransit Truck Terminal on the Freight Interstate

The system will be designed to have a number of intermodal terminals along portions of the interstate highway system. For example, a local trucker could pick up a trailer from a point of origin south of Chicago destined for Secaucus, NJ, and would drive it to a nearby terminal along I-80. There the trucker would drive the trailer into a FASTRANSIT sled, unhook the tractor and drive off. Terminal operators would secure the trailer to the sled, close the end doors of the aerodynamic shell of the sled, and enter the destination into the sled’s electronic control system. The sled would then travel along Fastransit tracks in the I-80 ROW to a terminal in the New Jersey Meadowlands. There, terminal operators would drive the trailer off the sled to an interchange/holding area, where a local driver would pick it up using standard fifth-wheel operations and drive it to its destination in nearby Secaucus.